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Then, before the 15 October date, we were contacted and told that an engineer would not be available until Thursday 25 October. Almost a whole month after the order was placed – but because of the wait, they’d give us a slightly better deal, so we agreed.

When the day rolled around, my housemate had booked the day off work for the engineer – they can only say they will be at the house between 1pm and 6pm, a whole five hour window of potentially sitting about twiddling your thumbs, wasting an afternoon.

Claims: BT says it can get you switched within 10 days - we were just trying to get reconnected and it took over a month

Guess what happened? The engineer didn’t show up – and didn’t even have the courtesy to call and say that would be the case - totally negligent customer care from BT in my opinion.

This whole debacle turned into some sort of internet nightmare. BT, in my mind, started to stand for ‘Big Trouble’ or ‘Bloomin’ Terrible’.

My housemate contacted its complaints team and was given a string of the same empty promises it made before.

He was told that it ‘didn't matter if we cancelled the order and went with another supplier as they all use the same engineers and it would take longer in the long run.’

He says: ‘I was told I could rebook installation for a "tentative" date which was not guaranteed and was on the 14 November or I could cancel the entire package and they could fast track a new order and install it within a week.

‘I was also told that BT Openzone is a completely different company and that BT has no control over the slots available.’

Finally I snapped and contacted its public relations team.

A senior complaints handler called me on Friday 26 October and apologised for the situation.

Could they get me out an engineer for the Saturday?

Well according to her, computer said ‘no.’ She couldn’t give me a date until the Monday.

I started to question if BT wants new customers at all. I mean, if this is the way it goes about treating new customers, I dread to think how existing ones are treated.

Finally they said they could get an engineer round on a Saturday – one of us didn’t want to waste another day off work. But it couldn’t be done until November 10.

Then, out of the blue, this Saturday, an engineer showed up, without warning and connected us after my complaint ‘reached the chairman.’

Total time it took him to install it? Ten minutes.

But it makes me wonder how many more potential new customers are being left in limbo when it comes to installation. If my complaint hadn’t been passed up the food chain, we would have been left waiting for another week and a half to get connected (if the engineer bothered to show up).

And remember that escalation was triggered by me snapping, deciding I was going to write about it and contacting the press team - a route not open to everyday customers.

Big cuts: Chief executive Ian Livingston, has consistently cut costs more deeply than expected, with a further £128million estimated this year - but is it hitting customer service?

I asked BT what the problem was and if it always takes it this long to connect new customers. It said: ‘BT would like to apologise for the delay in providing a broadband service, and for the inconvenience caused as a result of the missed engineer appointments.

‘The UK has seen the worst summer weather for more than 100 years. There have been more than 170 flood warnings, more than double the amount of average rainfall, and in some places a month’s worth of rain falling in one day. These unprecedented conditions have caused inevitable issues in our access network and we’ve had to carry out hundreds of thousands of repairs but we’ve made very good progress.

‘Our fault intake continues to be above seasonal volumes for this time of year. The increase in fault volumes, combined with the fact that a higher proportion are taking longer to fix, has impacted the time it takes Openreach to provide service in the worst-affected areas - meaning longer lead times than we would usually expect.’

We haven’t got off on the best foot with BT – I just keep my fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong with our connection during the period we live in the house so we don’t have to contact them again.

CUSTOMER NIGHTMARE: Have you had problems with BT? How long did it take for it to fix your problem? Have you been stood up by an engineer of had an excessive wait to even get connected? Or do you think BT is one of the better providers? Let us know in the comment box below…